This amazing song by Paul Mounsey is on the Nahoo Too album, released in 1997 ;)

Here we have a song; which I think is about the South America tribes, but cant work out the lyrics after verse 2, the foreign languaage and the backing in the choruses

KaiwÃ¡ Farewell - (Paul Mounsey)

Verse 1

ï»¿Long ago when our fathers were young Men came, and the claimed all the land Took the trees and they sent them away Now we try to survive day by day You see, they're squeezing us out And the creatures they sneer at our creed As they witness, the bootleggers' greed We can run but we cannot go far We no longer know who we are You see, they're squeezing us out

Chorus

Goodnight, Mother dear Going to sleep, I'm ,gonna put out the flame Can't see no future here Lay me down and end this shame

Verse 2

Out here on the edge without hope No heart, no spirit to cope The silent rebellion goes on Maybe someone will notice we're gone You see, they're squeezing us out

Chorus

Goodnight, Mother dear Going to sleep, gonna stand aside Can't see no future here Time to go to the other side

Goodnight, Mother dear Going to sleep, gonna put out the flame Can't see no future here Lay me down and end this shame

Goodnight, Mother dear Going to sleep, gonna stand aside Can't see no future here Time to go to the other side Goodnight, Mother dear Going to sleep, put out the flame Can't see no future here Lay me down and end this shame (Fade out)

RunrigFan, a second glance convinced me that you did not change your browser's encoding, but edited a UTF-8 file in some non-Unicode environment. The characters looking like ï»¿ are the "Byte Order Marker", meant to mark the very beginning of a UTF-8 file. (Remedy: ensure that it looks right, then copy, then run htmlesc, then paste to the Mudcat entry box.)

The elves may take care of this, in particular change the title. Kaiwá) is a language spoken by 20000 Brazilians. The video (not the lyrics) seems to convey the erroneous message that a pre-sin paradise still existed in the 20th century.

All I can read in the lyrics is that the land, the trees, and the creed was taken away, which in my opinion is a reasonable complaint, though perhaps fruitless. (Another question is whether the song can claim to speak with the authentic voice of indigenious Brazilians.)

In the video, in contrast, tribal persons of decades ago are being displayed, their nudity symbolizing innocence. This is false romanticism in the bad tradition of Margaret Mead. We would like so much to be a priori peaceful, only corrupted by an evil western culture, thus perhaps reversible. Children and "primitive" peoples are hoped to corroborate those dreams - and rightly refuse to do so.

If 1500-2000 persons can read and write the Kaiwá language, it may not be terminally doomed.

To survive day by day; mean claimed and took the trees and gained the land meaning the people can run but cant go far; because they feel they doint know themselves cos it feels like a ghost town; well my theory